Over the past couple of years, interest in Device-as-a-Service (DaaS) has grown by leaps and bounds. If you’re not already familiar with DaaS, it’s a new way of managing an organization’s fleet of computer equipment by leasing rather than purchasing devices. DaaS dramatically changes the game of managing IT equipment, leading analysts to predict a substantial migration to DaaS among all kinds of private and public organizations. Let’s find out why.

Changing the Cost Structure of IT

Before DaaS, companies typically treat IT equipment as a capital expense: you pay the full price of the equipment upfront, but only gain the business value of the device over time, while the real value of the device continually decreases. You also have to pay the variable costs of managing the devices, including IT support, maintenance and ultimately recycling or disposal. The costs are substantial and largely front-loaded for most organizations.
With DaaS, companies can treat IT equipment as an operational expense for a monthly service: you pay for what you need as you go. With DaaS from Red8, for example, customers get the latest devices on their desktop, while Red8 handles the upgrade, maintenance and support of those machines, on-demand. Whenever a system goes down or reaches its end of life, we simply swap in a new system. All the costs and headaches of maintaining a fleet of machines for a hefty up-front investment, plus variable IT overhead, get restructured as a predictable monthly fee with all the support and services built-in.

The Top 8 Benefits of Switching to DaaS

Beyond the improved cost structure of DaaS, there are several benefits driving migration, including improvements in security and compliance, uptime and productivity, and lifecycle management and sustainability.
1. Cost Structure: There’s a reason businesses are switching to anything and everything as a service. Paying a fixed and predictable cost for value as you go, and offloading areas of business that are not core competencies, are smart ways to preserve resources for investment in things that matter.
2. Security: Let’s face it. Security concerns pervade every aspect of business and technology. Having up-to-date machines with up-to-date software must become the new normal, and sometimes that’s easier to outsource to an accountable 3rd party.
3. Flexibility: Projects come and go. Business ebbs and flows. Having the flexibility to change devices and plans as business demands is big attraction for DaaS.
4. Up-to-date Technology: How many businesses have devices still running Win7? Enough said.
5. Productivity: Up-to-date applications and networking technology means less lag for end-users and less frustration.
6. Lifecycle Management: No more closets filled with outdated devices. No more terminal waiting lists for getting a new machine.
7. Uptime: When operating systems and applications get out of date, trouble tickets multiply.
8. Compliance: It’s not on everyone’s list, but for those who count the cost of compliance liability for outdated systems, DaaS promises a little more sleep at night.
The most far-reaching benefit is a significant improvement in security. How does a change in ownership and financing impact security? By offloading system updates and patches to an accountable third party, ensuring that endpoints are up to date with the latest security settings and configurations. Corporate-owned devices are notorious for being out-of-date, leading to many of the largest security breaches of the last decade.
Similarly, offloading IT maintenance and upgrades generate measurable improvements in uptime and productivity, by simplifying the process of managing broken devices and systems. When a system goes down or needs an upgrade, we simply swap it out, and deal with the system on our time rather than yours. This also ensures that on the whole your entire fleet of devices is more up to date with the latest operating systems and hardware, able to make use of the latest applications and network advantages.
As may be obvious by now, DaaS is a revolution in lifecycle management, because it offloads the entire process to a third party so businesses can focus resources on their core business. That also produces residual benefits for organizations working toward improved sustainability. With DaaS, you no longer have mountains of boxes and packaging to dispose of, and you no longer have closets full of outdated equipment to offload.

Does DaaS Really Deliver on its Promise?

DaaS has already been around for several years, and the case studies are shedding new light on the business case for migration. Early promotions of DaaS heavily promoted the cost savings, which led to some surprises and poorly managed expectations. There are transitional costs as you make the change from ownership to services, which pushes the cost savings from what many were led to believe would be a windfall, to a cost savings that grows over time. That overhyped windfall led to many of the criticisms of the early DaaS rollouts.
Today, the pricing models for DaaS are far more sophisticated and can be tuned to the specifics of each business. There are few surprises today in how to model and manage a transition to DaaS, and the benefits described above are far more accessible to most organizations.
Red8 is proud to partner with HP in helping organizations implement DaaS into their businesses, all while providing more secure, scalable and flexible IT networks. If you’d like to learn how you can leverage our partnership to achieve your own health IT business objectives, connect with us on LinkedIn, or reach out directly to our team at info@red8.com.